Understanding the Distinction Between Negligence and Gross Negligence

Understanding the Distinction Between Negligence and Gross Negligence

Considering your options after an accident means you’re likely thinking about filing a personal injury lawsuit. During these meditations, you’ll hear a lot about the concept of negligence and gross negligence. The average person might think they’re interchangeable terms, but they’re not. Negligence and gross negligence are different degrees of the same thing, with the latter being much more serious. If you’re one of the 31 million Americans requiring medical treatment for injuries each year, per the National Center for Health Statistics, here’s what you must know about negligence vs. gross negligence. To protect your rights and ensure fair compensation, consider speaking with an experienced personal injury lawyer.

Key Takeaways

• Negligence must be proven in all personal injury cases to enable you to claim compensation by filing a lawsuit. Without negligence, there’s nobody to hold responsible for your damages.
• Negligence is defined by conduct that falls below the standard of care a reasonable person would expect to display.
• Gross negligence is the next step up from ordinary negligence and pertains to conduct considered egregious, where the defendant knew of the risks and disregarded them.
• In terms of lawsuits, gross negligence opens the door for punitive damages, which are a special type of compensation designed to punish the defendant.
• The burden of proof for gross negligence is higher than ordinary negligence, and your legal team will be required to prove the higher threshold for gross negligence.
• If you believe you’ve been the victim of negligence, get in touch with an attorney to discuss your case.

Defining Negligence: The Foundation of Liability

Negligence is the foundation for most of the 400,000 personal injury claims filed annually in courts across the United States, based on statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice. It pertains to the failure to behave with a level of care that a so-called reasonable individual would have exercised under the same circumstances. In other words, negligence can be something you did that could be construed as careless or something you didn’t do that was necessary. Under the definition of negligence, your actions or inactions don’t have to be intentional, merely careless.

What Constitutes Negligence?

Negligence is when your conduct is below the standard of care reasonably expected. Typically, the reasonable person standard is used, which is a theoretical person used to determine whether someone’s actions or inactions were reasonable. Using the reasonable person standard aims to remove personal bias from the situation and provide an objective view of the situation. For example, if a driver was speeding at double the speed limit and runs through a stop sign, a reasonable individual would agree that this behavior falls below the standard of care expected. Likewise, a store owner who is too lazy to clean up a spill or put down a wet floor sign and then sees a customer slip and fall, most would agree that the store owner didn’t act with a reasonable standard of care. Remember, the behavior must be considered careless. It doesn’t have to have any intent behind it.

The Legal Elements of Negligence

Personal injury cases require four elements to establish and prove negligence. Without satisfying each element, the plaintiff won’t get any financial compensation for their losses. The four legal elements are:

1. Duty – You owed a duty of care to the injured party.
2. Breach – You breached that duty of care.
3. Causation – Your breach led directly to the plaintiff’s injuries.
4. Damages – The plaintiff experienced actual losses.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice estimates that nine of ten tort cases involve personal injury. Hence, establishing negligence is one of the priorities of any experienced personal injury lawyer.

Duty of Care: A Key Component

One of the core components of establishing negligence is determining whether the defendant owed a duty of care. Whether there is or there isn’t really depends on the relationship between the parties and the context of the situation. For example, every driver has a legal duty of care to other road users, their passengers, and pedestrians to follow the rules of the road to avoid a car accident. On the other hand, medical professionals have a duty of care to deliver competent and careful treatments to their patients. You can’t claim negligence even if you suffered harm without proving that there was a duty of care.

Exploring Gross Negligence: A Deeper Level of Fault

Gross negligence takes the next step up on the negligence scale. It’s a more extreme form of carelessness. To qualify, there must be a voluntary disregard or conscious attempt to infringe upon the safety, rights, and lives of others. It’s the type of behavior that could be interpreted as intentional. For example, an airline pilot operating a plane after twelve shots of vodka would be considered gross negligence. Another example could be a driver who goes through a school zone at 120 mph in the middle of the day. Qualifying a situation as gross negligence opens the door to receiving punitive damages. These special damages are imposed separately by courts to punish the defendant for their conduct.

What is Gross Negligence?

States set guidelines on what qualifies as gross negligence. All gross negligence cases involve failing to exercise reasonable care, but they also include reckless disregard for the safety of others. The Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 41.001 discusses what counts as gross negligence and focuses on two components:

1. The defendant’s behavior must represent an extreme risk from an objective point of view.
2. The defendant must have had subjective knowledge of the risk involved in their behavior, but decided to proceed anyway.

For example, if a building manager has been repeatedly told about fire code violations and a fire breaks out a week later, and it’s found that they did nothing, this would be considered gross negligence.

Key Characteristics of Gross Negligence

Gross negligence and ordinary negligence are similar, but several aspects differentiate them. These include:

• Extreme Recklessness – The person’s conduct has gone far beyond a simple lapse in judgment or human error.
• Obvious Danger – The risks of the person’s actions or inactions were clear, and any reasonable individual would have seen the danger.
• Conscious Indifference – The person knew about the risks and consciously ignored them.
• High Risk of Harm – There was a much higher risk of harm than in an ordinary negligence situation.
• No Minimal Care – Most gross negligence cases involve scenarios where even the most basic safety measures weren’t implemented, such as sending construction workers onto high scaffolding without safety harnesses.

Comparative Severity: Gross Negligence vs. Ordinary Negligence

Comparing gross negligence and ordinary negligence leads to many similarities, but in all cases, the degree of fault is much higher with gross negligence. In short, behavior that reaches the limit of gross negligence is so careless and reckless that it cannot be considered a simple mistake. Defendants found to have acted negligently will have to pay compensation to the party they injured. On the other hand, defendants found to have been grossly negligent will not only pay compensation but also punitive damages as an extra punishment. It’s why cases involving grossly negligent actions tend to have much higher settlement amounts, and may even see parallel criminal law cases.

Legal Implications: How Negligence and Gross Negligence Differ

Negligence and gross negligence are two distinct legal concepts designed to differentiate between different levels of misconduct. Ordinary negligence can be a simple mistake or a lapse in judgment. Gross negligence is a level above because it’s a conscious disregard for others. However, there are levels above gross negligence, such as criminal negligence under tort law. Someone who’s grossly negligent didn’t necessarily intend to harm anyone. They just didn’t care if they did.

Consequences and Liability: Understanding the Legal Framework

Whenever someone is found to have been negligent in a personal injury claim, they’ll usually have to compensate the defendant for their losses. Settlements are designed to restore the injured party, or make them whole again. Someone who’s found to be grossly negligent faces a range of legal consequences, such as:

• Punitive Damages – These are extra damages on top of standard compensation to punish the defendant.
• Defense Ineligibility – Defenses like signed waivers and other disclaimers are common to standard negligence cases, but if there’s gross negligence involved, a defendant may be ineligible to use them.
• Professional Consequences – Defendants convicted of gross negligence may face professional consequences. For example, it could result in losing your professional license in certain industries.

The best way to separate the two is to view negligence as a mistake that can be righted and gross negligence as a mistake requiring punishment.

Punitive Damages: When Gross Negligence Comes Into Play

Standard negligence cases won’t involve punitive damages. These damages are imposed to punish the defendant and usually only come into play when gross negligence, fraud, or malice are involved. Of course, the standard for proving gross negligence is much higher than ordinary negligence. How much you can be awarded in punitive damages depends on various factors, including the severity of the defendant’s misconduct and the level of harm caused. Under Texas’ statutes, punitive damages are capped at $200,000 or double the economic damages plus an equal amount of non-economic damages, with a cap of $750,000. The higher figure is used. Note that Texas’s punitive damage cap may be disregarded under specific circumstances, like if the defendant’s conduct constitutes a felony.

Case Law Examples: Illustrating the Differences

Let’s focus on some real-world examples to determine what the difference looks like when these two legal definitions are implemented. Firstly, suppose there’s a basic auto accident case, where a driver ran a red light because they’re playing on their phone and rear-ended someone else. Courts would consider this standard negligence because the driver didn’t exercise reasonable care and had no intention of causing harm. Now, in the 2001 case of Lee Lewis Construction Inc. v. Harrison, Texas Supreme Court judges upheld a previous ruling of gross negligence against the construction company for ignoring basic safety protocols that resulted in a worker’s death. Likewise, in the Mobil Oil Corp. v. Ellender case in 1997, a gross negligence ruling was upheld by a jury after the company exposed workers to dangerous chemicals without warning them, even though evidence showed they knew the health risks in advance.

Application in Personal Injury Cases

Experienced personal injury attorneys begin by attempting to prove negligence because it’s the foundation of claiming compensation. Without proof of standard negligence, claiming compensation is basically impossible and many cases have died at this point. Standard negligence is the easiest type of negligence to prove because it can arise from basic carelessness. On the other hand, proving gross negligence is harder but also massively more impactful because it opens the door for punitive damages, which could amount to a six-figure award. Attorneys will usually start by deciding on the level of negligence because it decides the potential value of a case and the strategy they’ll employ.

Proving Negligence in a Court of Law

Proving negligence requires fulfilling the four elements of establishing a duty of care, breaching that duty, causation, and damages. Like any claim, claims of negligence or gross negligence must be backed by evidence. Examples of evidence a plaintiff’s lawyer might bring include:

• Official accident reports
• Expert testimony
• Eyewitness statements
• Security camera footage
• Accident scene photos
• Medical records

Every layer of evidence is slotted together to build a compelling argument that meets the burden of proof.

How Gross Negligence Impacts Damages and Compensation

Gross negligence will always result in more damages and compensation. Standard compensatory damages don’t change on their own because damages are damages regardless of the intent or lack of intent behind them. Where the money comes from is in punitive damages. It’s not uncommon for punitive damages to equal or even exceed standard compensatory damages. Plus, if you’re eager to settle quickly, proof of gross negligence will usually result in higher pre-trial offers during settlement negotiations.

Real-World Examples: Illustrating the Concepts

Confusion arises when talking about negligence because the differences can be subtle. The average person often struggles to understand the nuances of the legal system, especially because different states can have slight tweaks in their rules regarding where the boundary between standard and gross negligence lies. Let’s go through some cases of negligence and gross negligence to illustrate some real-world cases.

Case Studies of Negligence in Everyday Life

Most negligence cases focus on everyday cases of personal injury. For example, take Hartner v. Home Depot. In this case, a woman fell over a utility hole cover inside a Home Depot store. The cover was obscured by water, and the accident victim sustained a serious knee injury. In this case, the woman was awarded over $1 million in damages, and Home Depot was held 95% responsible for failing to correct a known hazard. We can also look at one of the world’s most famous personal injury cases involving gross negligence. In Liebeck vs. McDonald’s Restaurants in 1994, Stella Liebeck received third-degree burns after spilling hot coffee over herself. Although the media has made up its own narrative, the coffee was served at 180 degrees Fahrenheit, despite McDonald’s being fully aware of previous burn incidents. The initial ruling was $200,000 in compensation and $2.7 million in punitive damages. These numbers were reduced significantly on appeal.

High-Profile Cases of Gross Negligence

Gross negligence cases display a reckless disregard for the safety of others. However, some cases have resulted in global headlines for their enormous sums. In 1981, the Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co. case led to Ford being found guilty of gross negligence for selling a Ford Pinto, knowing full well that its design flaw increased the chances of its exploding when struck. Internal memos proved Ford was aware of this, thus leading to a $127.8 million award. Another case was the Kylie McKenzie v. United States Tennis Association case in 2024, where professional tennis player McKenzie sued the USTA for gross negligence after they failed to protect her from sexual assault by her coach.  She was awarded $9 million after the USTA was found to have known about previous complaints about the coach.

Seeking Legal Advice: When to Consult an Attorney

If you believe you’ve been the victim of negligence or gross negligence, it’s time to get in touch with an experienced personal injury lawyer. Ideally, the best time to consult an attorney is as soon as possible to establish the circumstances of the accident and your losses. An attorney can evaluate your case and figure out whether you’ve got a case. Most personal injury law firms provide free consultations, so there’s no harm in seeing if you’ve got a valid claim.

Identifying Negligent Behavior: What to Look For

Many accident victims are unaware they’ve been the victim of someone else’s negligence. Instead, they might pass it off as a genuine accident that an apology will solve, but that won’t cover your medical bills, lost wages, or property damage. Here are some of the red flags of negligence to look for:

• Ignoring a known safety hazard.
• Not paying attention to safety regulations.
• Failing to follow expected professional standards.
• Showing signs of recklessness.
• Neglecting basic responsibilities.

Steps to Take After Suffering from Negligence or Gross Negligence

Following these steps is vital to protect your claim if you believe you’ve been harmed in an accident caused by someone else’s negligence.

1. Start by seeking immediate medical attention to get an idea of the full extent of your injuries. That includes even if you feel fine, because many serious injuries might not show signs until much later.
2. Document everything. Use your cell phone to take pictures of the accident scene and visible signs of injury.
3. Talk to any eyewitnesses and ask them to provide a statement and their contact details regarding what happened.
4. File a report. Depending on the environment, this may be a police report or a workplace accident report.
5. Don’t discuss your case. Casual conversation can be used against you, including casual apologies. Only talk about your case with a legal professional.
6. Contact an attorney to discuss your next steps.

Conclusion: The Importance of Understanding Negligence Types

Understanding the difference between gross negligence and ordinary negligence is a game-changer because of the impact it has on your case and any potential settlement you might be entitled to. The best way to handle any accident is to call an attorney to decide whether you’ve got a case. At DJC Law, we’re the experts in personal injury cases. With over $400 million won for hardworking Americans, we’re the best choice for helping you file your claim, so contact us today for your free case consultation.

Frequently Asked Questions About Negligence

Can I recover damages if I’m partially at fault?

That depends on your state’s negligence laws, but most states allow you to claim financial compensation even if you’re partially at fault. In Texas, you’re entitled to receive a settlement if you’re less than 51% responsible for an accident.

Is there a time limit to file a claim for negligence?

Yes, but it depends on your state. Texas’s statute of limitations is two years, meaning if you were the victim of an accident caused by negligence, you have two years from that date to file your lawsuit.

Can a business be held liable for negligence?

Businesses can be held liable for negligence just like individuals. Many claims revolve around holding businesses to account for negligence, including slip and fall accidents, product liability cases, and even negligent hiring practices. Considering your options after an accident means you’re likely thinking about filing a personal injury lawsuit. During these meditations, you’ll hear a lot about the concept of negligence and gross negligence. The average person might think they’re interchangeable terms, but they’re not. Negligence and gross negligence are different degrees of the same thing, with the latter being much more serious. If you’re one of the 31 million Americans requiring medical treatment for injuries each year, per the National Center for Health Statistics, here’s what you must know about negligence vs. gross negligence.

Key Takeaways

• Negligence must be proven in all personal injury cases to enable you to claim compensation by filing a lawsuit. Without negligence, there’s nobody to hold responsible for your damages.
• Negligence is defined by conduct that falls below the standard of care a reasonable person would expect to display.
• Gross negligence is the next step up from ordinary negligence and pertains to conduct considered egregious, where the defendant knew of the risks and disregarded them.
• In terms of lawsuits, gross negligence opens the door for punitive damages, which are a special type of compensation designed to punish the defendant.
• The burden of proof for gross negligence is higher than ordinary negligence, and your legal team will be required to prove the higher threshold for gross negligence.
• If you believe you’ve been the victim of negligence, get in touch with an attorney to discuss your case.

Defining Negligence: The Foundation of Liability

Negligence is the foundation for most of the 400,000 personal injury claims filed annually in courts across the United States, based on statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice. It pertains to the failure to behave with a level of care that a so-called reasonable individual would have exercised under the same circumstances. In other words, negligence can be something you did that could be construed as careless or something you didn’t do that was necessary. Under the definition of negligence, your actions or inactions don’t have to be intentional, merely careless.

What Constitutes Negligence?

Negligence is when your conduct is below the standard of care reasonably expected. Typically, the reasonable person standard is used, which is a theoretical person used to determine whether someone’s actions or inactions were reasonable. Using the reasonable person standard aims to remove personal bias from the situation and provide an objective view of the situation. For example, if a driver was speeding at double the speed limit and runs through a stop sign, a reasonable individual would agree that this behavior falls below the standard of care expected. Likewise, a store owner who is too lazy to clean up a spill or put down a wet floor sign and then sees a customer slip and fall, most would agree that the store owner didn’t act with a reasonable standard of care. Remember, the behavior must be considered careless. It doesn’t have to have any intent behind it.

The Legal Elements of Negligence

Personal injury cases require four elements to establish and prove negligence. Without satisfying each element, the plaintiff won’t get any financial compensation for their losses. The four legal elements are:

1. Duty – You owed a duty of care to the injured party.
2. Breach – You breached that duty of care.
3. Causation – Your breach led directly to the plaintiff’s injuries.
4. Damages – The plaintiff experienced actual losses.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice estimates that nine of ten tort cases involve personal injury. Hence, establishing negligence is one of the priorities of any experienced personal injury lawyer.

Duty of Care: A Key Component

One of the core components of establishing negligence is determining whether the defendant owed a duty of care. Whether there is or there isn’t really depends on the relationship between the parties and the context of the situation. For example, every driver has a legal duty of care to other road users, their passengers, and pedestrians to follow the rules of the road to avoid a car accident. On the other hand, medical professionals have a duty of care to deliver competent and careful treatments to their patients. You can’t claim negligence even if you suffered harm without proving that there was a duty of care.

Exploring Gross Negligence: A Deeper Level of Fault

https://youtu.be/2qj5psMs5_w?si=_SzBrQ8vB8skZhjZ Gross negligence takes the next step up on the negligence scale. It’s a more extreme form of carelessness. To qualify, there must be a voluntary disregard or conscious attempt to infringe upon the safety, rights, and lives of others. It’s the type of behavior that could be interpreted as intentional. For example, an airline pilot operating a plane after twelve shots of vodka would be considered gross negligence. Another example could be a driver who goes through a school zone at 120 mph in the middle of the day. Qualifying a situation as gross negligence opens the door to receiving punitive damages. These special damages are imposed separately by courts to punish the defendant for their conduct.

What is Gross Negligence?

States set guidelines on what qualifies as gross negligence. All gross negligence cases involve failing to exercise reasonable care, but they also include reckless disregard for the safety of others. The Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 41.001 discusses what counts as gross negligence and focuses on two components:

1. The defendant’s behavior must represent an extreme risk from an objective point of view.
2. The defendant must have had subjective knowledge of the risk involved in their behavior, but decided to proceed anyway.

For example, if a building manager has been repeatedly told about fire code violations and a fire breaks out a week later, and it’s found that they did nothing, this would be considered gross negligence.

Key Characteristics of Gross Negligence

Gross negligence and ordinary negligence are similar, but several aspects differentiate them. These include:

• Extreme Recklessness – The person’s conduct has gone far beyond a simple lapse in judgment or human error.
• Obvious Danger – The risks of the person’s actions or inactions were clear, and any reasonable individual would have seen the danger.
• Conscious Indifference – The person knew about the risks and consciously ignored them.
• High Risk of Harm – There was a much higher risk of harm than in an ordinary negligence situation.
• No Minimal Care – Most gross negligence cases involve scenarios where even the most basic safety measures weren’t implemented, such as sending construction workers onto high scaffolding without safety harnesses.

Comparative Severity: Gross Negligence vs. Ordinary Negligence

Comparing gross negligence and ordinary negligence leads to many similarities, but in all cases, the degree of fault is much higher with gross negligence. In short, behavior that reaches the limit of gross negligence is so careless and reckless that it cannot be considered a simple mistake. Defendants found to have acted negligently will have to pay compensation to the party they injured. On the other hand, defendants found to have been grossly negligent will not only pay compensation but also punitive damages as an extra punishment. It’s why cases involving grossly negligent actions tend to have much higher settlement amounts, and may even see parallel criminal law cases.

Legal Implications: How Negligence and Gross Negligence Differ

Negligence and gross negligence are two distinct legal concepts designed to differentiate between different levels of misconduct. Ordinary negligence can be a simple mistake or a lapse in judgment. Gross negligence is a level above because it’s a conscious disregard for others. However, there are levels above gross negligence, such as criminal negligence under tort law. Someone who’s grossly negligent didn’t necessarily intend to harm anyone. They just didn’t care if they did.

Consequences and Liability: Understanding the Legal Framework

Whenever someone is found to have been negligent in a personal injury claim, they’ll usually have to compensate the defendant for their losses. Settlements are designed to restore the injured party, or make them whole again. Someone who’s found to be grossly negligent faces a range of legal consequences, such as:

• Punitive Damages – These are extra damages on top of standard compensation to punish the defendant.
• Defense Ineligibility – Defenses like signed waivers and other disclaimers are common to standard negligence cases, but if there’s gross negligence involved, a defendant may be ineligible to use them.
• Professional Consequences – Defendants convicted of gross negligence may face professional consequences. For example, it could result in losing your professional license in certain industries.

The best way to separate the two is to view negligence as a mistake that can be righted and gross negligence as a mistake requiring punishment.

Punitive Damages: When Gross Negligence Comes Into Play

Standard negligence cases won’t involve punitive damages. These damages are imposed to punish the defendant and usually only come into play when gross negligence, fraud, or malice are involved. Of course, the standard for proving gross negligence is much higher than ordinary negligence. How much you can be awarded in punitive damages depends on various factors, including the severity of the defendant’s misconduct and the level of harm caused. Under Texas’ statutes, punitive damages are capped at $200,000 or double the economic damages plus an equal amount of non-economic damages, with a cap of $750,000. The higher figure is used. Note that Texas’s punitive damage cap may be disregarded under specific circumstances, like if the defendant’s conduct constitutes a felony.

Case Law Examples: Illustrating the Differences

Let’s focus on some real-world examples to determine what the difference looks like when these two legal definitions are implemented. Firstly, suppose there’s a basic auto accident case, where a driver ran a red light because they’re playing on their phone and rear-ended someone else. Courts would consider this standard negligence because the driver didn’t exercise reasonable care and had no intention of causing harm. Now, in the 2001 case of Lee Lewis Construction Inc. v. Harrison, Texas Supreme Court judges upheld a previous ruling of gross negligence against the construction company for ignoring basic safety protocols that resulted in a worker’s death. Likewise, in the Mobil Oil Corp. v. Ellender case in 1997, a gross negligence ruling was upheld by a jury after the company exposed workers to dangerous chemicals without warning them, even though evidence showed they knew the health risks in advance.

Application in Personal Injury Cases

Experienced personal injury attorneys begin by attempting to prove negligence because it’s the foundation of claiming compensation. Without proof of standard negligence, claiming compensation is basically impossible and many cases have died at this point. Standard negligence is the easiest type of negligence to prove because it can arise from basic carelessness. On the other hand, proving gross negligence is harder but also massively more impactful because it opens the door for punitive damages, which could amount to a six-figure award. Attorneys will usually start by deciding on the level of negligence because it decides the potential value of a case and the strategy they’ll employ.

Proving Negligence in a Court of Law

Proving negligence requires fulfilling the four elements of establishing a duty of care, breaching that duty, causation, and damages. Like any claim, claims of negligence or gross negligence must be backed by evidence. Examples of evidence a plaintiff’s lawyer might bring include:

• Official accident reports
• Expert testimony
• Eyewitness statements
• Security camera footage
• Accident scene photos
• Medical records

Every layer of evidence is slotted together to build a compelling argument that meets the burden of proof.

How Gross Negligence Impacts Damages and Compensation

Gross negligence will always result in more damages and compensation. Standard compensatory damages don’t change on their own because damages are damages regardless of the intent or lack of intent behind them. Where the money comes from is in punitive damages. It’s not uncommon for punitive damages to equal or even exceed standard compensatory damages. Plus, if you’re eager to settle quickly, proof of gross negligence will usually result in higher pre-trial offers during settlement negotiations.

Real-World Examples: Illustrating the Concepts

Confusion arises when talking about negligence because the differences can be subtle. The average person often struggles to understand the nuances of the legal system, especially because different states can have slight tweaks in their rules regarding where the boundary between standard and gross negligence lies. Let’s go through some cases of negligence and gross negligence to illustrate some real-world cases.

Case Studies of Negligence in Everyday Life

Most negligence cases focus on everyday cases of personal injury. For example, take Hartner v. Home Depot. In this case, a woman fell over a utility hole cover inside a Home Depot store. The cover was obscured by water, and the accident victim sustained a serious knee injury. In this case, the woman was awarded over $1 million in damages, and Home Depot was held 95% responsible for failing to correct a known hazard. We can also look at one of the world’s most famous personal injury cases involving gross negligence. In Liebeck vs. McDonald’s Restaurants in 1994, Stella Liebeck received third-degree burns after spilling hot coffee over herself. Although the media has made up its own narrative, the coffee was served at 180 degrees Fahrenheit, despite McDonald’s being fully aware of previous burn incidents. The initial ruling was $200,000 in compensation and $2.7 million in punitive damages. These numbers were reduced significantly on appeal.

High-Profile Cases of Gross Negligence

Gross negligence cases display a reckless disregard for the safety of others. However, some cases have resulted in global headlines for their enormous sums. In 1981, the Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co. case led to Ford being found guilty of gross negligence for selling a Ford Pinto, knowing full well that its design flaw increased the chances of its exploding when struck. Internal memos proved Ford was aware of this, thus leading to a $127.8 million award. Another case was the Kylie McKenzie v. United States Tennis Association case in 2024, where professional tennis player McKenzie sued the USTA for gross negligence after they failed to protect her from sexual assault by her coach.  She was awarded $9 million after the USTA was found to have known about previous complaints about the coach.

Seeking Legal Advice: When to Consult an Attorney

If you believe you’ve been the victim of negligence or gross negligence, it’s time to get in touch with an experienced personal injury lawyer. Ideally, the best time to consult an attorney is as soon as possible to establish the circumstances of the accident and your losses. An attorney can evaluate your case and figure out whether you’ve got a case. Most personal injury law firms provide free consultations, so there’s no harm in seeing if you’ve got a valid claim.

Identifying Negligent Behavior: What to Look For

Many accident victims are unaware they’ve been the victim of someone else’s negligence. Instead, they might pass it off as a genuine accident that an apology will solve, but that won’t cover your medical bills, lost wages, or property damage. Here are some of the red flags of negligence to look for:

• Ignoring a known safety hazard.
• Not paying attention to safety regulations.
• Failing to follow expected professional standards.
• Showing signs of recklessness.
• Neglecting basic responsibilities.

Steps to Take After Suffering from Negligence or Gross Negligence

Following these steps is vital to protect your claim if you believe you’ve been harmed in an accident caused by someone else’s negligence.

1. Start by seeking immediate medical attention to get an idea of the full extent of your injuries. That includes even if you feel fine, because many serious injuries might not show signs until much later.
2. Document everything. Use your cell phone to take pictures of the accident scene and visible signs of injury.
3. Talk to any eyewitnesses and ask them to provide a statement and their contact details regarding what happened.
4. File a report. Depending on the environment, this may be a police report or a workplace accident report.
5. Don’t discuss your case. Casual conversation can be used against you, including casual apologies. Only talk about your case with a legal professional.
6. Contact an attorney to discuss your next steps.

Conclusion: The Importance of Understanding Negligence Types

Understanding the difference between gross negligence and ordinary negligence is a game-changer because of the impact it has on your case and any potential settlement you might be entitled to. The best way to handle any accident is to call an attorney to decide whether you’ve got a case. At DJC Law, we’re the experts in personal injury cases. With over $400 million won for hardworking Americans, we’re the best choice for helping you file your claim, so contact us today for your free case consultation.

Frequently Asked Questions About Negligence

Can I recover damages if I’m partially at fault?

That depends on your state’s negligence laws, but most states allow you to claim financial compensation even if you’re partially at fault. In Texas, you’re entitled to receive a settlement if you’re less than 51% responsible for an accident.

Is there a time limit to file a claim for negligence?

Yes, but it depends on your state. Texas’s statute of limitations is two years, meaning if you were the victim of an accident caused by negligence, you have two years from that date to file your lawsuit.

Can a business be held liable for negligence?

Businesses can be held liable for negligence just like individuals. Many claims revolve around holding businesses to account for negligence, including slip and fall accidents, product liability cases, and even negligent hiring practices.